


Pinned

by Thimblerig



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Dungeon, F/F, Hair Kink, Mildly Dubious Consent, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 05:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16152407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: “Um.” Eve tilts her head down and shuts her eyes. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful here, I really don’t, but perhaps, a key?”





	Pinned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maraudersaffair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudersaffair/gifts).



> Special thanks to my beta and cheerleader, Anathema Device.

“What is this, polka-dots? Do they go all the way down?” The girl, the assassin, _Villanelle,_ fingers the sharp tip of Eve’s shirt-collar and touches, consideringly, the neck of her fine knit sweater.  
  
“Stop that,” Eve says irritably. She’s been on her feet too long: they ache, flattened on stone radiating chill through her stockings. The wall, also, is cold against her shoulder, and the dodgy fluorescent light overhead buzzes snidely.  
  
Villanelle steps back, eyes kittenish wide. “Am I invading your personal space? I am _so sorry.”_ She puts fingers to her lips, dramatic, a gesture as consciously formed as a mime or an emoji. Eve is pretty sure she means it, though. Oksana… comes at emotions as one who learned a language from a book. Eve sighs, and tips her head to rest against the brick wall. Her mouth is still sweetly rank with the aftertaste of chloroform; the handcuffs around her wrists rattle, pinning her awkwardly to a heavy steel staple so that she must turn and twist to watch the only other being in the damp, high-vaulted room.  
  
“Did you miss me?” the assassin asks. “It’s been months and months and months; I have a scar now, want to see?” She drops her hands to the bottom edge of the tunic of her cleaner’s uniform.  
  
Eve squeaks.  
  
“I want you to let me go!”  
  
“You touched me very deeply,” Villanelle says solemnly. “I want you to know that. And also I bled a lot.”  
  
“Villanelle, _Oksana,_ please…”  
  
“I didn’t put you here. Cross my heart and hope to die. This is the basement of a Very Bad Guy and I don’t think you should stick around, no I don’t. Anyway, I should get moving.” Villanelle turns and takes the handle of her cleaning cart with an air of great virtue. “Torture chambers don’t clean themselves, you know!”

"If you didn't kidnap me then who? Why?"  
  
Villanelle's back shrugs eloquently. "Maybe you get under somebody's skin and they want to return the favour..."  
  
Eve thinks rapidly, going over the last few case files that went over her desk, a few drugdealers, a corrupt clergyman, an importer of forged baseball cards, entrepreneurs in the skirret trade... “Help me!”  
  
“Oh! You can’t get out of the cuff! If you want, I can dislocate your thumb for you, that is always hard the first time.”  
  
“Um.” Eve tilts her head down and shuts her eyes. She hears a sickening crunch from where Villanelle is standing. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful here, I really don’t, but perhaps, a key?”  
  
“Oh. Well then. Open your eyes.” She hears another sickening crunch and blinks. Villanelle steps in, eyes kitten-bright again, steps in close enough that Eve can feel the febrile heat of her, smell the odd blend of cleaning fluid, and rich perfume, and blood. “This,” she says, stroking her hand down Eve’s arm until she reaches the cuff, “is a Smith and Wesson Model 100. Both single and double-locking. Very standard.” Her fine-boned hand toys with Eve’s, interlacing fingers and then darting away. “Your hand is _so warm,_ you know.”  
  
Despite the exigencies of the situation, Eve’s cheeks also warm. Feather-light, Villanelle touches her cheek, moves to the corner of her eyes where Eve _knows_ the crows-feet are forming, slides down to rest, warm, against the pulse in her throat. “The key to your release,” the assassin says, “is nearby…” Then she giggles and buries her hand to the wrist in Eve’s hair, lighting sparks of pain as strands tangle and pull, steals a quick biting kiss and steps back with a simple metal bobby-pin between her lips. She waggles her eyebrows. “Is good, yes?” she says around the pin. “Nobody expects your key, because it is hiding, in plain sight.” She passes it to Eve’s mouth and steps back suddenly.

”Break the head off,” Villanelle says. “Right at the tip. Just like Frank’s cock,” she adds brightly.  
  
“That is grossly disrespectful!” Eve snaps. “And also, ew.” But she tongues the bobby pin around and chews it awkwardly between her teeth until the plastic tip comes away. The little assassin watches her mouth as she chews, and nods approvingly when Eve spits the pin into her hand. “Now insert it, just a bit, into the lock, and bend sideways. Like -”  
  
“Don’t mention cocks!” Eve says hurriedly, but she works the fiddly thing, one handed, opening it out and putting a kink in the metal of the raw end.  
  
“Now the other way,” the assassin tells her, “and you have a lockpick. Tada!” Mercurial, she turns then, and pushes again at her cleaning cart, its squeaking wheels complaining as she wanders out through a high arch where some gleaming, articulated machinery lurks in the gloom.  
  
“Then what?” Eve calls after her, nearly dropping the pin.  
  
Villanelle’s head appears from behind the arch and she holds out one hand, fore and middle fingers crooked. “You need to get it under the lip and once you hit the sweet spot you kind of… wriggle around. Difficult to show. Trust your instincts!” She disappears again, and Eve hears the desultory splashing of the mop and bucket.  
  
Eve has no instincts to trust.  
  
She works the pick around unprofitably for five minutes, rests her head against the brick, and breathes for a moment. It is still very cold in this basement.  
  
“Niko and I are getting a divorce!” she calls.  
  
_“Reeeeeeally…?”_  
  
It’s important that Villanelle know about the break up if Eve is going to keep hunting her. It’s safer for Niko if he isn’t the target of a homicidal young woman’s jealousy, so much safer, it’s _better_ for him, really, and he can rest quietly with his Bridge lessons and his math classes in peace and something resembling prosperity. She said that to look after Niko.  
  
Really.  
  
She braces herself for whatever cheesy, chirpy, self-absorbed thing the girl will say, fumbling wretchedly with the hairpin and the cold steel cuff.  
  
_“Bet it hurts, yeah?”_ she hears.  
  
Something slips in the cuff, almost, almost, _almooooost…_ It springs back.  
  
“Yeah,” she admits. “Breaking things off is supposed to make things calmer, isn’t it?”  
  
_“You were together for a reason,”_ Villanelle says gently, kindly. A mop slops in the other room. _“Something pulled you together, something kept you there.”_ (His fluffy moustache, his warm hands, his brilliance at figuring odds and percentages: quiet, fluffy, whipsmart Niko…) _“It fixes you. And something pulls you away. Those forces are together but they do not cancel out, no. They drag at you, as if you were stretched out on pins.”_  
  
“... Yeah,” Eve admits. “That’s what it feels like.” (Quiet, fluffy, _boring_ Niko. She misses his hugs desperately.)  
  
_“It’s natural to feel pain at a time like this. It’s okay! Be kind to yourself, Eve.”_  
  
“...Thanks.” She fumbles some more, in the ‘standard’ cuffs, then drops the pin and swears as it skitters away.  
  
“V-Villanelle?” she calls again. “Can you come back and help…?”  
  
In the distance, through the arch, a heavy door swings open. _Don’t leave me!_ Eve thinks.  
  
_“Oh hi!”_ she hears, chirpy and cherubic as ever. _“Don’t mind me, I’m just the cleaning service. Torture away, I won’t be a bother.”_  
  
Shit.  
  
_“And hey, I get overtime, so if you want to spatter more blood on my nice clean floor, go to town!”_  
  
Godammit.  
  
_“Wait, what? No, I’m just the cleaning service. Hey… you want me to play a Saucy French Maid? Mais oui, Monsieur…?_  
  
_“No. What are you doing?! No!!!”_  
  
A gun fires: a sharp crack and an echoing ricochet. Heavy footsteps, the slam of the distant door, heavy as a _close parenthesis._  
  
It would be easier, in the time that follows, if it were silent, but instead a pained whimpering fills the arched vault: whimpering, like a beaten dog, and breathy, troubled gasps.  
  
Full of manic energy, Eve fumbles for the dropped hairpin with her stocking foot, stretching out and rolling until she can pick it up with her toes and fumble it back into the lock.

Forever after Eve can't look at a handcuff without remembering what Villanelle - _Oksana -_ sounds like when she's hurting. But now she works at it with cold determination and bated ferocity. It's not going to end like this: she'll strangle the girl herself if she has to, but _not like this._

A twist, a click, and the cuff falls free. Eve gathers it up and holds it wrapped around her knuckles, and she prowls forward on silent feet.

In the dimness, the tables and the straps and the, the knives fill the room, brash and intrusive. The whimpering has gone. “Villanelle?” she whispers into the darkness.

A great weight drops onto her back from above and hands cover her eyes. “See I knew you could do it!” Villanelle coos into her ear. “I just needed to properly motivate you!”

Eve screams and drops one shoulder, jerking forward. The girl flies over and lands on her back on the damp floor, honey-coloured hair spraying out around her head like a maddened halo. Winded, Villanelle grins and mouths, _“I motivated you...”_

Eve drops on top of her, long-ago self-defence lessons entirely forgotten as, snarling, she lies on top of the girl, trying to pin her hands.

It doesn't matter. Villanelle lies still under Eve, lithe and warm and comfortable.

 _“Hey, Eve,”_ she whispers, and coughs. Louder, she says, “Hey Eve, you wanna help me kill a Really Bad Guy?”

Eve hesitates.

**Author's Note:**

> // I got my information on the locks from: https://www.itstactical.com/skillcom/lock-picking/how-to-pick-your-way-out-of-handcuffs/
> 
> I haven’t tried it myself and cannot vouch for the information. If you are moved to learn the technique, please use it responsibly and respect the laws of your country.
> 
> // _“The key to your release”_ \- Yes, yes I did steal this from that _Sherlock_ movie.


End file.
